Objections
by The Fandom Garrison
Summary: In which Dean never came to get Sam at Stanford, Jess doesn't die, and Sam becomes a young and successful defense attorney. One day, he takes the case of a man charged with grave desecration, breaking and entering, and first degree murder. Brotherly love and angst with plenty of Sam/Jess!


"Two counts of grand theft auto, four counts of assault... _multiple_ counts of grave desecration, credit card fraud, B &E, _and_ first degree murder?" Sam Winchester shook his head. "How long have they been looking for this guy?"

Special Agent Kieran Freely shrugged bewilderedly. "Coupla' years at least. From my understanding, they nearly cornered him more than once in the past few months but he's a real slippery fella. Only reason they managed to finally bring him in was an anonymous tip."

"Huh," was all all Sam replied. He flipped over another page of the thick file, rapidly assessing victims, reports—"no eyewitness accounts?"

"One, but it's shaky at best. This guy—he's good at what he does. Only one person who ever really saw him was a police officer who says he saw him jumping. Out of the second story window when the girl was killed. At night."

The two men shared an identical disparaging look. They'd become friends in the six months since Sam had been offered and accepted a prestigious job at Ingalls & Trenton straight out of Stanford undergrad. Sam, a defense attorney, and Kieran, an FBI Agent, shared views on many things...including the unreliable reputation of eyewitnesses in the dead of night.

"Anyway, " Kieran continued, pushing himself off of the wall on which they'd been leaning, "he's in the room if you wanna talk to him. Everyone's on lunch break so the all of the bugs are turned off. I know you like talking to your clients off the record first thing."

"You bet. Have a good one, okay?"

"You too, Winchester. Tell your wife I said hello!"

"Will do!"

Kieran vanished around the corner.

Alone, Sam exhaled. Ran a hand through his hair. His success at the firm at such an early age had granted him a fortunate legacy among his co-workers: respect. People asked him fewer questions. All the better, considering his history. The reason he'd bartered with the FBI techs that ran the interrogation room was because (especially with cases like these) his clients could be hunters who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The victim could have been shifter. Grave desecration could be contributed to putting vengeful spirits to rest. Credit card fraud was obvious because hunting never really delivered a monetary paycheck.

Or they could just be unhinged psychos. Frankly, Sam had defended more of those in court than anything else.

Sam walked down the empty hallway, one eye on the file. Put his hand on the doorknob to the interrogation room, snapped the file shut. Opened the door...

The file almost fell out of Sam's grip. He could only stare at the handcuffed man, who was lounging on the table as if he owned the building. When they made eye contact, the man's carefully bored face split into a delighted (and subtly surprised) grin that Sam knew all too well—

"Heya, Sammy," said Dean Winchester, grinning from ear to ear.

—•—•—

The night Sam left for college, John drank himself into oblivion. Dean, with the the image of his little brother shrinking in the rear view mirror stuck in his head, was tempted to follow his father's example. Instead, he made himself a promise: it didn't matter where Sammy went or what choices he made. No matter what, Dean would keep his little brother safe...

Even at a distance.

—•—•—

As soon as Dean busted out of this fine government institution of pretentious cops and bad coffee, he was going to make Bela pay. It was her who'd hacked his cell, forged the text from Sam, and then dropped the tip at the location where the text said Sam was being held. Technically, Dean should have known better: it'd been years since the two of them had actually had direct contact. But when Dean's phone had rang at some ungodly hour, when he'd stared at the text (allegedly from Sam) begging for help because some kind of supernatural shit had him tied up in a warehouse just outside of Palo Alto (Dean knew the area already from his multiple checking-up-on-Sam missions), rational thought took a siesta. Before Dean was even aware of what he was doing he was on the road with the gas pedal pushed all the way to the floor.

Of course, the warehouse had been full of cops, cruisers, and no Sam in sight. Oddly enough, Dean was almost relieved it had been a trap. Prison was preferable to Sam in danger. That was a rule. In short, Dean had been held at gunpoint, slammed face-first to the ground, and given a first-class ride to the interrogation room. So here he was.

But here was Sam.

Even since Dean had last checked up on his little brother (six months ago), Sammy had put on some more muscle. This close, Dean could see that he was tall, even taller than he'd been before he left, still taller than Dean himself. He'd let his hair grow longer, but it didn't look so juvenile anymore; Sam looked grown up. Not a kid, but a man.

And hell if that didn't make Dean proud.

All of this in the few reigning seconds of silence when his little brother opened the door wearing a suit and tie, looking just as surprised as Dean felt. But Dean hid it with his grin, said, "Heya, Sammy," like they say each other every day.

"Dean?" Sam said, as if he wasn't sure Dean was real. His voice, Dean noted mentally, had gotten deeper. Stronger.

"In the flesh." He purposely tried to spread his hands, scowling when the handcuffs stopped him short.

Sam didn't smile. He hovered in the doorway for a moment longer before shutting it behind him and seating himself across from Dean, face shuttered. Dean slid his legs off the table.

"So," Sam said, his voice oddly clipped. He spread a file—Dean's rap sheet-on the table between them. "I get the grave desecration and fraud. What about the murder?"

Dean studied his little brother again, just for a moment. "Shifter," he said finally, eyeing the impassive lines of Sammy's face. "That's why I was in St. Louis in the first place. Son of a bitch got the drop on me when I chased it into the sewers. By the time I got loose..."

"So that's what the cop saw," Sam muttered, staring down at the paper.

Something was off. Dean may not have had Sam's Ivy League brain, but he could tell, even now, when Sam was acting strange. Whenever Dean had pictured the two of them reuniting (because it was bound to happen sometime, right?), it had been Sam running to him and Sam making it all one chick-flick moment and Sam shedding one or two oh-so-manly tears. It had never been this cold, stony-faced Sam he'd never known. Dean might have blamed it on the two techies on the other side of the one-way glass to his left, but Dean knew Sam was sharper than that. He never would have come in here and given himself away so easily no matter how blind-sided he was by Dean's appearance.

He opened his mouth to ask, probably in a very subtle, clever way; but before he even got the words out, Sam cut him off without looking up. "There's no one in there and all the bugs are switched off."

Wow. Okay. "You can do that?" He asked before he could remember his filter.

The look Sam gave him when he finally raised his eyes off the paper made Dean feel, all of a sudden, very small. "It was a favor," Sam bit out. "Because that's what _normal_ people can do, Dean. Ask for favors."

Oh, shit.

This wasn't about blowing their cover.

This was about The Argument.

The Argument had been present for most of Sam's memory. It was the thing that underscored every single one of his innocent questions as a kid ( _Where's Dad? Why do we move around so much? Why don't we have a mom? Or a house_?). Back then, either Dad or Dean would would snap a terse, short answer at him and Sam, not knowing any better, would shut up.

Things changed when he found out monsters were real.

The core of Sam's internal childhood revolved around a single question: _why can't I just be normal?_ It was the question that made Dean scoff, not-so-gently cuff Sam's head and say something along the lines of _because you're a freak, kiddo_ or _because our job isn't done yet._ Even worse was their Dad. In adolescence, Sam's question became the ancestor of The Argument, of how Sam needed to do what he was told and follow orders or he'd get them all killed and not to focus so much on what didn't matter (like school). It was The Argument the spawned the fight that drove Sam away from his family.

"Sammy-" Dean tried to plead, but Sam cut him off again.

"This is bad, Dean."

"What?"

Sam raised his eyebrows. "The fact that you have to be proven innocent of murdering an innocent girl! Normally, I wouldn't willingly _take_ a case like this! No one would!"

"Normally? You mean-"

"We need to come up with a backstory and fake situation for you when we go on the record. Yeah, Dean," Sam snapped, scrawling his signature on the last page of the file. "We're going to court."

 **Thoughts? I started this for a friend of mine so that she has something to read when she has downtime in Scotland! Please Review! What would you like to see in this story?**


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